Another bowl game not what NCAA needs

NCAA has approved
another college football bowl game, the ConAgra Bowl to be on Christmas Day
in Hawaii for the 2002-03 season. This makes 28 certified postseason bowl games.

Thus 56 schools will go to bowl games next year. With only 115 Division I-A
schools playing football, this means that 48.7 percent of the teams will make
the postseason. More precisely, with two or three schools typically sanctioned
against playing in bowl games each year for NCAA violations, half of the eligible
schools play in bowl games.

Some might say that this is a good sign. The NCAA is behaving in an egalitarian
manner, befitting its stated commitment to amateurism and academics. Of course,
if this were the goal, one wonders why not have 57 bowl games?

Others say that the proliferation of bowl games is good for no one. It detracts
from the top contests, hurting the best teams and diminishing the value of college
football's richest asset. Aside from the four alliance bowls, going to a bowl
game is a money-losing proposition for a school. Travel, lodging, entertainment
and food costs plus the obligation to guarantee thousands of ticket sales almost
always outpace the meager revenue going to the school.

Since the athletic programs of these schools are virtually always several million
dollars in the red anyway, the extra deficit from the bowl appearances just
requires increasing subsidies from the university budget.

Well, some do benefit. The athletic and academic administrators at the participating
schools get a free, perk-laden trip to a warm clime for themselves, and often
their families, in midwinter. The sponsoring bowl committee, assorted business
people from the local community, enjoys increased spending at the hotels and
restaurants in their city. And athletic directors delude themselves into believing
that they will have an easier time recruiting when they tell their prospects
that their school played in a bowl game.

Why not just admit the fact that fans really care only about the national championship?
Even among the four alliance bowls, ratings are strong for only the top one
or two games, depending on the ambiguity in the computer rankings.

MLB takes eight of 30 teams — or 27 percent — for its postseason.
The NFL takes 12 of 32 teams, or 38 percent. Based on those ratios, college
football can support 15 to 20 bowl games with 30 or 40 teams.

But there is a crucial difference. MLB and the NFL play an elimination tournament,
working down to the winner. The NCAA bowls are isolated events.

Although various alternatives have been suggested, the most obvious is to have
the NCAA run a national championship tournament, as it does in basketball and
in Division I-AA, Division II and Division III football. The Division III championship,
for instance, began in 1973 as a single-elimination tournament for four teams.
It became an eight-team single-elimination tournament in 1975, and the current
format has 16 teams.

An eight-team format would involve three rounds to determine a national champion.
The alliance argues that three games in the postseason would prolong the season
two weeks and this would take up too much time for the student athletes. Not
a bad thought, but in the past decade three alliance conferences have added
conference championship games, and two preseason games have been created.

If those two weeks were used instead to support a championship tournament,
sponsored by the NCAA, the selection of participants could be open and the distribution
of revenue could be more equal, similar perhaps to the NCAA basketball tournament.
If the regular-season schedule could be tightened to save one additional week,
the final tournament could include four rounds with 16 teams.

Furthermore, if the NCAA were to add games, it would be far less disruptive
for student athletes to play during the first two or three weeks of January
when school is not in session than is the scheduling of the March basketball
tournament.

Many fans would prefer a playoff system for football, as in basketball, because
it is more interesting to have real competition decide championships than to
have it done by computer. Moreover, many writers have cited possible anomalies
with the bowl championship formula that will result in the crowning of an ambiguous
or disputed champion.

In a playoff format, the greater the number of rounds included, the greater
would be the financial bonanza to the NCAA. DeLoss Dodds, athletic director
at the University of Texas, believes a playoff system would be so popular that
it would add at least an extra $1 million in revenue for every team playing
Division I-A football. Schools clamoring for resources to meet the demands of
Title IX might welcome such a financial windfall.

But the politics of change are not encouraging. The bowl committees would lose
control if a playoff format were adopted and, hence, resist such a change. The
alliance members would lose privileged access to their self-proclaimed championship
games and would be forced to share their postseason revenue with dozens, if
not hundreds, of other NCAA schools. They too would resist the change. Conference
commissioners, ADs, coaches and sometimes college presidents and trustees from
the alliance would lose the enticing perquisites provided by the bowl committees.

Conference commissioners may also prefer to defer to the NFL wishes to have
no intrusion of competition during its playoffs and Super Bowl. Unfortunately,
these groups are already sufficiently powerful to make such a reform unlikely.
Without serious governance reform, college sports will continue to operate against
the best interests of the student athletes and the fans.

Andrew Zimbalist teaches economics at Smith College and has written extensively
about college athletics.